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conceptions which also helped to move the generał evolution of Eu-ropean thought in the opposite direction.⁵¹ These investigations have a constitutive significance for the critical theory, sińce the theory in its original form - Marcuse’s thought - and in its contemporary stage is deemed to be the consequence as well as the overcoming of the crisis of the bourgeois philosophy and science. There are certainly some doubts about sociology and about the legitimacy of philosophy as a relatively autonomous form of expressing the critical theory. During the 1930’s, the critical theory was regarded as an antipode of the contemporary bourgeois philosophy and sociology which dialecti-cally transcends their tradition and develops it upon new theoretical positions.⁵² The critical theory is therefore not a particular science but a historically new form of rational self-consciousness which is built on the basie theoretical premise that socio-economic relationships make up the social being and dialectically determine other conditions of man’s life and his activity. At that time Horkheimer was definitely against the critical theory turning into sociology.⁵³ Later on sociology and philosophy were accepted as relatively autonomous forms of in-tellectual creativeness, but an emphasis was laid on the necessity for their closest possible interrelation.⁵⁴ It is far morę important that the basie principle about what is the continuation and what the overcom-ing of the conception of reason in the philosophical tradition should, at least on principle, remain unchanged. While reason continues to be regarded as a comprehensive - theoretical and practical - rational self-consciousness, the theory seeks opportunities for the realization of reason in social life. Out of a number of passages which demonstrate the immutability of this basie standpoint, we shall only adduce two. These passages are all the morę important sińce they were not madę in passing but in a discussion on the concept of the critical theory and reason. Marcuse wrote in 1937 as follows: »In a world without reason, reason is only a semblance of rationality; in a state of generał unfreedom, freedom is only a semblance of being free«.⁵⁵ This is how Horkheimer explained in 1951 conditions for overcoming the historic-al gulf between the objective and subjective reason (substantial and functional rationality): »It is only when relationship between man

⁵¹ In addition to the above-mentioned works by Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno and Habermas, also worthy of notę is the book by M. Horkheimer, Th. W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufkldrung, Querido Verlag, Amsterdam, 1947.

⁵* Sec H. Marcuse, »Philosophie and Critical Theory* in H. Marcuse, Ncgations. Essays in Critical Theory, Bcacon Press, Boston, 1969, pp. 134, 141-142; H. Marcuse, Reason and Reoolution, Hcgcl and the Risc of Social Theory, (1941), Rout-ledgc and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, pp. 252, 257.

^M M. Horkheimer, »Traditionclle und kritische Theoric*, p. 289. This conception of the theory makes the ąualification »of socicty« unnecessary, because it dcals not only with the study of society, but with man in generał, on the assumption that social relationships are primary. It is no wonder that the majority of its most prominent represcntativcs frequcntly only cali it the critical theory.

^M In the very strict division of a German univcrsitv into disciplines, the most eminent representatives of this school of thought (Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas) are simultancously professors of philosophy and, sociology (Horkheimer was until his retirement and Adorno until his death.)

** H. Marcuse, >*Philosophy and Critical Theory (Negations, Essays in Critical Theory), Beacon Press, Boston, 1969, p. 137.

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